


Remembrall

by persephone_stone



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: And Loves Hermione, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Healing, Neville Teaches Kindergarten, Tattoos, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:21:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25962769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone_stone/pseuds/persephone_stone
Summary: Neville Longbottom goes to therapy and discusses his job, his relationships, and his tattoos.Part of the gift fic collectionFuck Your Gender Rolesforgranger_danger.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Neville Longbottom
Comments: 53
Kudos: 142
Collections: Fuck Your Gender Roles





	Remembrall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [granger_danger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/granger_danger/gifts).



> For my friend, granger_danger, who loves Neville Longbottom. You once told me there were not enough Nevmione fics out there, so I hope you enjoy my humble offering to your mighty ship. Happy Birthday!
> 
> A big thank you to a truly kind genius, [Pacific Rimbaud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PacificRimbaud), for beta'ing this and flailing over soft!Neville with me.
> 
> And immediately stop what you're doing and check out the amazing art [Avendell](https://avendell.tumblr.com/post/629065612561448960/this-tattooed-neville-was-commissioned-as-a) created for this particular version of Neville.

The walls of Dr. Rosemary Cooper’s office were a soothing, pale blue, reminiscent of calm, still waters and an even calmer, stiller mind. A small fountain bubbled softly in the corner of the waiting room, mingling with the gentle strains of classical music floating through the air to soothe overactive brain waves. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with titles such as _EMDR for the Magical World_ and _The Five Love Languages of Witches and Wizards._

A door opened, and a middle-aged witch stepped through. “Neville? Are you ready for our session?”

Neville Longbottom unfolded himself from one of the plush waiting room chairs, smiling crookedly at Dr. Cooper before following her down a short hallway. They entered a room at the back of the office, dimly lit by several floating, lavender-scented candles and a single brass lamp on the doctor’s desk. Neville took his usual spot on the low leather chaise—which Dr. Cooper had used an extending charm on to accommodate his long legs—and the petite witch settled herself into a wingback chair behind her desk, flicking her wand at some parchment and a quill to ready them for note-taking. Turning a large hourglass over by hand, she nodded at Neville, indicating that their session had begun.

“So, Neville,” she said, voice low and warm. It wrapped around Neville like a blanket, allowing him to relax. “The last time we met, you were telling me about your job. Would you like to explore that a little more?”

He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and shifting his head against the pillow. “I really like my job. I like working with children, teaching them important things they need to know before they’re sent to Hogwarts.”

“Did you always want to be a primary school teacher?”

The side of Neville’s mouth lifted in a crooked smile. “Not at all. I always thought I’d work at Hogwarts, take over Herbology classes for Professor Sprout. But being back at that castle—living there, working there—I just...I couldn’t do it. I’d have a panic attack if I so much as thought about it.” 

“You withstood a lot of trauma there during the war. It’s natural that negative feelings would be triggered by that place.”

“Not just during the war,” he murmured, thinking of all the time he had spent in the ancient Scottish castle. He’d had his fair share of trauma in years one through six, literal hell of seventh year notwithstanding.

Dr. Cooper nodded, crossing one leg over the other. Her smart leather flats gleamed in the candlelight, just as they had during every one of his weekly sessions for the past three years. They were a safe thing to focus on as he spoke of the Department of Mysteries and Unforgivable Curses and decapitated snakes. Who would have thought he would one day find reassurance in a pair of women’s shoes? Certainly never him.

“So instead you helped found your current workplace,” Dr. Cooper said, gently nudging them back onto this session’s path. “The Albus Dumbledore Primary School for Witches and Wizards; first school of its kind in wizarding Britain. Can we talk more about your motivations for opening the school?”

“Well,” Neville began, “I reckon it all goes back to my childhood. I don’t have a lot of happy memories of that time.” He felt the familiar emotions rise to the surface—loneliness and fear, longing and worry—and allowed himself to feel them, to let them wash over him and then recede. He was no longer a melancholy child.

“Gran loved me, I never doubted that she did,” he started again. “But she was an old woman. An old woman who had just lost her son and daughter-in-law, and then got saddled with a baby. Me,” he explained unnecessarily, “who—according to her—never slept, always cried, and looked exactly like her son, who was brave and good and selfless and stolen away from her because of it.” He closed his eyes again, picturing his father’s face as it was in photographs—young, handsome, kind—rather than how it was now—haggard, gaunt, blank; eyes vacant and dull in the sickly green lighting of St. Mungo’s.

“Probably why she had a rough go of raising me.” His voice was quiet, contemplative, respectful of the woman who had been the only mother he’d ever truly known. “It also just wasn’t in her nature to be gentle or patient, although those are things I needed when I was a child. Things that I can make sure this generation of children have. At least while in my classroom,” he finished.

Dr. Cooper sat quietly, allowing him to finish processing his thoughts. 

“You know, I’ve always loved plants,” he finally said, glancing at Dr. Cooper’s desk, where a small assortment of succulents sat. “They are associated with all my best memories— gardening with Gran, taking Herbology at Hogwarts, setting up the greenhouse at Dumbledore Primary.” He smiled, thinking of tiny hands covered in dirt, childish giggles bouncing off the warm glass walls of the greenhouse as he showed his students how to space their seeds apart in the garden beds so they would have enough space and nutrients to grow properly.

“Children are a lot like plants,” he said. “They need nurturing, tending, and love. Sunshine and water, too,” he joked, and Dr. Cooper chuckled. “But if they get all that—if they have someone to look out for them? They grow. They thrive.”

Dr. Cooper’s quill scratched gently against the parchment. It was the only sound in the quiet room for several long moments. Finally, she spoke. “I have it on rather good authority that you are an excellent caretaker—of both gardens and children.”

“You know what they call Year One of primary school in the States?” Neville asked, arching one dark eyebrow at Dr. Cooper. “Kindergarten,” he answered without waiting for her response. “Literally means ‘children garden.’”

“It sounds like it is a job you were born to do, then.”

He lifted one shoulder, shrugging off the praise. He still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the hero worship that had started coming his way after the war. The Order of Merlin and financial reward had been hard enough to take, let alone the hundreds of daily owls he received from witches (and wizards) across Great Britain. He admittedly had a better time of it than Harry, Hermione, or even Ron, but it had still been quite an adjustment.

“It was important to me to make sure all wizarding children—including muggle-borns—had the same educational opportunities in their early years. That being born to a family who may not have the same resources as others—” he broke off, thinking of the Weasleys, poor in galleons; the Malfoys, poor in empathy; the Grangers, poor in knowledge of the magical world. 

Clearing the gruffness from his voice, he continued. “Just because a family may not have the same resources as others, doesn’t mean that their child doesn’t deserve a quality education.”

“I can tell that the school means a lot to you.”

“It does,” he replied simply.

“Speaking of things that mean a lot to you,” Dr. Cooper said, and only because Neville had spent so many hours of his life listening to her could he discern the undercurrent of amusement in her words. “How are things going with Hermione?”

He shot her a look, and it was a testament to her skill as a therapist that she kept her features carefully schooled, revealing nothing.

Neville shook his head fondly. Dr. Cooper had been his biggest cheerleader during his pursuit of—and subsequent relationship with—Hermione Granger, his first friend in the world and the woman he had loved for as long as he could remember. Ever since her bushy-headed, bossy-mouthed self had invaded his train car on the Hogwarts Express, quizzing him on spells and helping him look for his missing toad, Trevor, there had been no one else for him.

“They are going well,” he said simply, chuckling at Dr. Cooper’s arched brows. 

“Care to expand on that?” she asked.

He thought of his small cottage in Gloucester, of a breakfast table with two plates, two cups of tea, and one copy of _The Daily Prophet_ being passed back and forth between two sets of hands. Of stepping through the Floo after a weekend trip to check the plants in Dumbledore Primary’s greenhouses, finding Hermione curled up asleep on the sofa, cozy in one of his favorite jumpers. Of trips to farmers’ markets and art museums and dinners with their friends, holding hands and sharing smiles. Of nights in his bed, as his hands learned the shape of her body, his lips learned the taste of her skin, his ears learned the sounds she made when he moved inside her. Of their upcoming anniversary, and the ring he had hidden in his sock drawer, a peacock sapphire on a thin gold band.

“Maybe next session,” he finally answered, and Dr. Cooper smiled.

“Well then, what would you like to talk about in our remaining time?”

Neville sat up, deftly unbuttoning the left sleeve of his shirt and rolling the fabric up to his elbow in neat folds. His skin was exposed bit by bit, a riot of color appearing as an intricate sleeve of tattooed flowers was revealed. 

“Finished my sleeve,” he said with a grin, lifting his forearm to show Dr. Cooper the newest section of his body’s artwork: two purple irises, their leaves and stems seamlessly intertwined with the other flowers that mapped his skin. “They mean ‘wisdom.’ And they’re my tribute to you, Doctor.”

She blinked, poker face temporarily flickering as she absorbed his words. “To me?”

He nodded. “I know we’ve talked a lot about these tattoos. Every single one of them represents something important to me. May I?” he asked, reaching for the buttons down the middle of his shirt, and Dr. Cooper nodded. 

Quickly unbuttoning his shirt, he shrugged it off his shoulders, leaving his upper body bare. He gestured with his hands as he spoke, pointing out each tattoo. 

“Irises for wisdom,” he said again, tapping each flower as he spoke. “Violets for loyalty. A chrysanthemum for honesty. Magnolias for love of nature.” He smiled, self-deprecating and sincere, before continuing. 

“Poppies for remembrance, edelweiss for courage and devotion—that one is for Hermione—zinnias, also for remembrance, orchids for beauty and strength—those are also for Hermione—roses are for love and beauty—well, those are for Hermione, too,” he said, blushing. “And bluebells for constancy.”

“A lot of flowers for Hermione,” Dr. Cooper noted. “And many for remembrance, as well.”

“Right, well there’s more than the flowers for that,” Neville answered, tapping his chest. His mother and father’s initials rested there, intertwined with vines over his heart. He still remembered when he had gotten that particular tattoo; a cold winter’s night, fist still clenched around his mother’s Christmas gift of a gum wrapper as the tattoo needle buzzed in his ear.

He gestured at the rest of his tattoos: his grandmother’s name dancing along his collarbone; his favorite plant, a Mimbulus Mimbletonia, in a place of honor on his right pectoral muscle; a Gryffindor lion resting over his ribs; the sword (and invented shield) of Gryffindor—the product of a drunken night with Harry and Ron—stretching from the top of his right shoulder down through twisting vines of Devil’s Snare; and his old friend, the toad Trevor, where he could easily roll up a sleeve and find him on his right forearm.

“I had a terrible memory as a child,” he said, and although Dr. Cooper knew—had heard it many, many times over—she nodded encouragingly. Neville slipped his arms back into his shirt as he spoke. “For spells, for charms, for common sense. These tattoos are my own personal Remembrall—only instead of reminding me of something I’ve forgotten, they remind me not to forget all the good things I have in my life. And you’re one of those things, Doc. I don’t know where I’d be without you.”

“Neville, that’s very kind,” she replied. “I’m happy to hear that our sessions have helped you.” She smiled at him, maternal and warm. “Would you tell me about those?” she added, gesturing at the two tattoos on his solar plexus. 

One was a seed, sprouting a small green seedling. Above it was a large white swan, wings spread wide and neck stretched over a rising sun.

“Well, the seed is for my students. Represents their potential; how learning and care will help them grow.” He paused, smiling down at the swan.

“I couldn’t cast a Patronus for the longest time,” he said, eyes still pointed downward. “On account of me not really having many truly happy memories. But when Hermione and I—“ he broke off, voice thick once again with emotion. 

“When she and I started our relationship,” he tried again, “when she smiled at me, when she told me she loved me—I’ve never felt happier. Never felt more at peace. So she and I tried casting our Patronuses again. And this was mine,” he finished softly, smiling up at Dr. Cooper. “A swan.”

“It’s a lovely animal,” she answered. “Swans represent transformation.”

“I reckon that’s appropriate,” he said, doing up the buttons on his shirt and glancing at the hourglass. A thin layer of sand was left in the top; their session was almost over. “I’ve changed a lot since I was a kid.”

“Do you think you’ve changed for the better?” 

He pretended to contemplate her question for a moment, watching the sand spill down through the hourglass. “Yes, I do.”

They said their goodbyes shortly after, agreeing to see each other again next week at the same time, as well as at their group session with Hermione the following month. 

As Neville left the peacefulness of his therapist’s office and stepped out into the heart of wizarding London, heading to the closest apparition point to go home to Hermione, he knew without a doubt that what he had said was true. 

He _had_ changed for the better, and knew he would continue to work on being the best possible version of himself. For his students. For Hermione. And for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you're so inclined, I'd love to have you join me on [Tumblr](https://persephonestone.tumblr.com/). Join [granger_danger](https://grangerdangerfics.tumblr.com/), too!
> 
> And a BIG thank you to all the other participants in our [Fuck Your Gender Roles](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/FuckYourGenderRoles?fbclid=IwAR0tvWbVj7QdzUR7ymOkb6oluKdBliAYN8Gujd9s3oA7DEnaX_5icjt-St0) collection for M! It was really fun collaborating on such a cool, positive project for our mutual friend!


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